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Two barebones comparisons of quotes from Chapter II of Antonio Damasio’s Looking For Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain and Part I: Chapter 13 of Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan.

Note: On Damasio’s view emotion and feeling are separate entities, although emotion both underpins and is intricately related to feeling. Emotions are “collections of reflex responses, some quite elaborate and all quite well coordinated” (42) which are geared towards an organism’s survival and delectation.

Citations:

• Thomas Hobbes, A.P. Martinich and Brian Battiste, Eds, Leviathan, Broadview, 2011.

• Antonio Damasio, Looking For Spinoza: Joy, Sorrow and the Feeling Brain, William Heinemann: London, 2003.

Comparison 1

Damasio:

“Not content with the blessings of mere survival, nature seems to have a nice afterthought: The innate equipment of life regulation does not aim for a neither-here-nor-there neutral state midway between life and death. Rather, the goal of the homeostasis endeavor is to provide a better than neutral life state, what we as thinking and affluent creatures identify as wellness and well-being. (p 35)” [bolding mine – PL Note: survival and delectation]

Hobbes:

“… if any two men desire the same thing which nevertheless they cannot both enjoy, they become enemies; and in the way to their end (which is principally their own conservation, and sometimes their delectation only) endeavour to destroy or subdue one another. (Ch.XIII, paragraph 3, p 121)” [bolding mine – PL]

Comparisons 2 & 3

Damasio:

“To the best of our knowledge, most of the living creatures equipped to emote for the sake of their lives have no more brain equipment to feel those emotions than they do to think of having such emotions in the first place. They detect the presence of certain stimuli in the environment and respond to them with an emotion. All they require is a simple perceptual apparatus — a filter to detect the emotionally competent stimulus and the capacity to emote. Most living creatures act. They probably do not feel like we do, let alone think like we do. This is a presumption of course, but it is justified by our idea of what it takes to feel as explained in the next chapter. The simpler creatures lack the brain structures necessary to. portray in the form of sensory maps the transformations that occur in the body when emotive reactions take place and that result in feeling. They also lack the brain necessary to represent the anticipated simulation of such body transformations, which would constitute the basis for desire of anxiety.

It is apparent that the regulatory reactions discussed above are advantageous to the organism that exhibits them, and that the causes of those reactions — the objects or situations that trigger them — could be judged “good” or “bad” depending on their impact on survival or well-being. But it should be apparent that the paramecium or the fly or the squirrel do not know the good or evil qualities of these situations let alone consider acting for the “good” and against the “bad.” Nor are we humans striving for goodness when we balance the PH in our internal milieu or react with happiness or fear to certain objects around us. Our organisms gravitate toward a “good” result of their own accord, sometimes directly as in a response of happiness, sometimes indirectly as in a response of indirectly as in a response that begins by avoiding “evil” and then results in “good.” I am suggesting, and I will return to this point in chapter 4., that can produce advantageous reactions that lead to good results without deciding to produce their reactions, and even without feeling the unfolding of those reactions. And it is apparent from the make up of those reactions that, as they take place, the organism moves for a certain period toward states of greater or lesser psychological balance. (p 51)” [bolding mine – PL]

Hobbes:

“It may seem strange to some man that has not well weighed these things that nature should thus dissociate and render men apt to invade and destroy one another; and he may therefore, not trusting to this inference, made from the passions, desire perhaps to have the same confirmed by experience. Let him therefore consider with himself; when taking a journey, he arms himself and seeks to go well accompanied; when going to sleep, he locks his doors; when even in his house he locks his chests; and this when he knows there be laws and public officers, armed to revenge all injuries shall be done him; what opinion has he of his fellow subjects, when he rides armed; of his fellow citizens, when he locks his doors; and of his children, and servants, when he locks his chests. Does he not there as much accuse mankind by his actions as I do by my words? But neither of us accuse man’s nature in it. The desires and other passions of man are in themselves no sin. No more are the actions that proceed from those passions till they know a law that forbids them; which, till laws be made, they cannot know;…” ( Chapter XIII, Paragraph 10, p 124)